Re: "Heavyweight" Applications

Re: "Heavyweight" Applications

I used to use nothing but KDE, and still have a soft spot in my heart for it. However, around 4.6 it just started running sluggishly, and I eventually found myself using mostly CLI programs and tiling WMs. Even with a new quad-core CPU, discrete GPU and an SSD, I use lighter software because it loads quickly and runs reliably and (maybe most importantly for me) doesn't have distracting GUI clutter and notifications demanding my attention. The features of a program don't necessarily dictate how "heavy" it is, but most of the features included in "heavier" software aren't used by most people anyway (meaning that no one person uses the majority of the features; I'm sure no feature goes unused all the time). It's just better in my mind to have one tiny application that does what I want and does it well, than an application that does what I want, while trying to do everything else for no reason.

Amarok: My favorite GUI music player and organizer. However, since I don't use an iPod, or last.fm, and already have a web browser that I can use to look up lyrics and band info and a file manager for actual library management, it seems overblown. I can compile it myself and strip those features out, but it's simpler to just use MPD or Deadbeef (a close runner-up for GUI music players).

VLC: Don't quote me on this, but this might be the lightest "full-featured" media player around. I know it's gonna play my files without any hassle.

LibreOffice: 'Cuz really, what else are we gonna use? When it comes to my writing, though, I actually use Focus Writer: it can save a file as .odt, and I can import it into LibreOffice for formatting.

GIMP: SEE ABOVE

Firefox: I really keep it around because Luakit doesn't play nice with some online apps I use for school. A great browser, but not quite to my taste.

Re: "Heavyweight" Applications

I am a person that is always of the mindset of "use what works best for you".

For me, I love feature and configurability. I love to tweak things out to my heart's content, but I also like consistency (and the two don't always play well together) - a fluid, smooth looking and feeling environment where everything seems to fit and function as desired.

For the most part, I am a KDE fan. KDE, with it's activities, and insane amounts of configurability easily ready at my fingertips just fits me. However, right now I am playing with GNOME Shell 3.4, and I gotta hand it to GNOME, it is consistent. It looks like, and feels like a smooth machine. I am especially fond of the way messaging works, and how it all seems so well tied into the overal system. I also like the concept of extensions. On the other hand, I hate the feeling of the loss of control I get from it. KDE has some of that, yes, but at least it is still insanely configurable.

In truth, fvwm would probably be best suited for me because of it's insane configurability, however I just haven't had the time to sit down with it yet.. so another aspect I always must consider is the time cost of investment. I also like pekWM and JWM lol, but cannot work as well with tilers (despite trying to).

Many of the applications I use tend to be the so-called heavyweights...

Firefox - the main browser I use. I also like Konqueror (yeah I know), and always try to like Opera... Chrom(ium) just never fits me right though I do like their new tab page, and thus use an extension for that in firefox.

Clementine: My music player of choice, as I have many playlists set up for different needs. I also like DeadBeef.

k3b: I've yet to find a disc writer that works as well as it does.

Dolphin: I've yet to find a file manager as nice as it.

KDE (entire environment including WM): It just get's me and does what I want it to do. I also am liking GNOME Shell at the moment, but as with other times, I may not stay with it. pekWM would be my choice of a lightweight WM. I just never could get Compiz stand alone to work like I wanted it to.

LibreOffice: I write books. I use the spreadsheet. For these things, LibreOffice gets the job done. I am closely watching Calligra Office as well, but it still has a way to go.

GIMP: No lightweight alternative I've found that can do what I need to do, like GIMP can. Krita is nice as well, and sometimes I alternate between the two, but GIMP is my primary.

Telepathy Client: I am not sure if this is light weight or heavyweight. In GNOME Shell, I love the integrated feel of empathy. I want to use kde-telepathy, and it is getting close to usable for me.. in the meantime I use the aging Kopete.

Yakuake: my favorite terminal. I even use it in GNOME Shell.

Legends of Nor'Ova - role playing community devoted to quality forum-based and table-top role play, home of the Legends of Nor'Ova Core Rule Book and Legends of Nor'Ova: Saga of Ablution steam punk like forum based RPG

Re: "Heavyweight" Applications

Until recently when Shotwell became more usable (downloading .avi and making folders by dates) DigiKam was my "must have" super heavy application even on KDE was bringing always a bunch of extra staff. I also realize that Inkscape tends to be resource hungry with some filters applied and in the installation side too. GnuCash became also kind of big and is one of those applications I cant live without anymore.

The necessity of some heavy duty applications and getting rid of fat at the same time was my motivation to start using Archlinux.

Re: "Heavyweight" Applications

To mean heavy isn't necessarily more RAM / resources, but also tons of dependencies. The fewer deps the happier I am.

The heaviest program I use is k3b. I can do everything from the console, even burning ISOs and stuff; but trying to burn data cd's and audio cd's is just a royal PITA, even using helpers like bashburn. Luckily I don't burn media too much anymore.

#binarii @ irc.binarii.wtf-------------Allan -> ArchBang is not supported because it is stupid.

Re: "Heavyweight" Applications

This is my personal list of very versatile programs. They do not necessarily consume lots of RAM or CPU (though few of them could be considered 'light'). What they do have in common, however, is having lots of features. Once you get used to them, you won't want to miss them (I bet).

Re: "Heavyweight" Applications

Obviously everyone has a different definition of what "lightweight" vs"heavyweight" means to them. To me, part of being lightweight, is reducing redundancy by using applications that don't come with unused and unnecessary features. Usually those features are better handled by a separate "focused" application. One that comes to mind is the bittorrent client built into Opera.

That being said, Banshee is my favorite music player and definitely one of my must have "heavyweight" applications. Although, I appreciate how easy it is to disable many of the features that I don't use.

Re: "Heavyweight" Applications

I use lightweight software (regarding feature count) for mostly the same reasons that have already been mentioned. Initial configuration may be a hassle, but it saves time overall. Also, I trust lightweight software more than heavyweight software because complexity leads to instability. OSS software has allowed packaging systems to greatly reduce redundant code and efforts. The modular nature of linux packages means one can build "small" software that does one thing very well and can easily fall back on other small packages for extra features (and they implement their features very well too).

Examples of small, modular software:dcraw - command-line raw image converter reused in several different applications (RawThreapee, digiKam, Zero Noise, etc.)mpd - like dcraw, is used by several different applicationslibtorrent, libpurple, lib...

Likewise, I use heavyweight software because initial configuration can be too much of a hassle:firefoxblender - there really are no alternatives RawTherapee - almost all the sliders are necessary. Like other raw converters, RawTherapee can't be any lighter/smaller or I'd start posting feature requests to the bugzilla.

Re: "Heavyweight" Applications

The best thing with Arch is the fantastic KDE packages. But I don't configure my installation much. If I'm extra adventurous i switch the background picture. Arch works great like a do it one time installation, always have the latest software with very little problem sort of distribution. I switched to Arch because my KDE installation worked better with less work for me. I had no desire to have light very customized installation.

Re: "Heavyweight" Applications

I'll mention jEdit here as I'm trying that out now. It looks like I might just convert to it from vim. I guess it doesn't have as many features as vim (which I suppose makes it more light-weight than vim), but those features are more easily discoverable. Sure, it's easier to just use a keyboard shortcut/command if you already have your fingers on the keyboard (which is very likely in a text editor) – but it's still easier to swift through a bunch of menus and dialogues to see if it could help you with something, than it is to read through :help or Google around to see whether vim happens to have something relevant to you. And once you've found what you're looking for, you can just bind some key combination to that feature.

It might be the sweet spot between just a text editor and a full-blown IDE for me.

“UNIX systems generally have a good, though not impeccable, record for software reliability. The typical period between software crashes […] is well over a fortnight of continuous operation.” ~ Dennis M. Ritchie, The UNIX Time-sharing System--A Retrospective

Re: "Heavyweight" Applications

I love Arch. It brought new life to a 5 year old Lenovo Thinkpad and the combination of Arch, Slim & XFCE is blazing fast on a machine that was struggling on its original XP and Ubuntu which has become as bloated. I'd say that by far, Firefox with addons is the heaviest application that I use everyday. Maybe Liferea is next as I have about 70 feeds in it.

Re: "Heavyweight" Applications

Re: "Heavyweight" Applications

Closed. Necrobumping with noise.

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